A Survey of Safety Conditions of Buildings and Grounds in Secondary Schools

Abstract

Black and white children (N = 553) in kindergarten, grade one, and grade two, as part of a total test battery were tested on items of agility, speed, power, flexibility, and endurance. An ANOVA design was employed for both equal and unequal cell frequencies to determine the effects of grade, sex, and race on gross motor performance. Significant (p < .01) improvements were found at each grade for speed, power, and endurance items; males had significantly better performances (p < .01) than females on all items with the exception of flexibility; black children had significantly (p < .01) lower values than white children in the speed item at each grade level.     

Restricted opportunities under employment reform: the experiences of select universities in the Chinese Mainland

This study investigates changes to academic work life under recent employment reform in the Chinese Mainland. It employs a mixed-methods research approach, first conducting a survey of 1,770 teachers at nine universities in Mainland China. These nine universities consist of first-tier, second-tier, and ordinary universities. Next, through a qualitative research approach, 60 teachers at three of the nine universities were interviewed. Teachers from the departments of management, information technology, education, and physics were interviewed, reflecting a variety of work conditions. Our study finds that the employment reform, with its stress on quantitative research output, has led to further restrictions on academic work and the standardization of academic development. The new measurements have led to a crisis of confidence and dignity for many senior teachers. Great pressure has also been placed on younger academics, who receive very limited promotion opportunities. This study offers a significant theoretical contribution to discussion on the changing academic work life and has policy implications for higher education personnel policy in China.     

Liminality,disruption, and change: A prismatic look at pandemic education

PROSPECTS - Using prismatic inquiry, a team of researchers documented a variety of personal experiences that spanned elementary through higher education, with the goal of determining what helped...     

Does Religious Education as an examination subject work to promote community cohesion? An empirical enquiry among 14- to 15-year-old adolescents in England and Wales

This study begins by examining the way in which, in both England and Wales, Religious Education has become implicated in political discussion regarding the role of education in promoting community cohesion. The relationship between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity (as an affective indicator of community cohesion) is then explored among 3052 14- to 15-year-old students. After controlling for contextual factors (school type and geographical location), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion) and religious factors (Christian affiliation, worship attendance, personal prayer and belief in God), a small but significant positive association was found between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity. This finding may be interpreted as supporting the view that Religious Education works to promote community cohesion, although the wider debate that the community cohesion agenda has generated among religious educators needs further exploration.     

Conditioned suppression of a positively reinforced shuttle response

Rats were trained to run up and down an alleyway for sucrose reinforcement on a variable interval schedule. Differential aversive classical conditioning with auditory CSs was then conducted in a separate apparatus (“off the baseline”) prior to those CSs being presented while the subjects were responding for sucrose in the alleyway. Once the effects of the CSs had extinguished, shock was reintroduced following one CS but not the other (“on the baseline” differential aversive classical conditioning). Both “off the baseline” and “on the baseline” conditioning resulted in conditioned suppression to the CS followed by shock, but little effect of the CS followed by no shock was found. In the “on the baseline” phase, total suppression of baseline responding occurred at moderate US intensities, and this appeared to result from the subject avoiding the location at which he was last shocked. At lower values, both baseline response rate and relative suppression ratio were functions of US intensity. The results are discussed in relation to the effects found in similar experiments using avoidance baselines.     

Are the Factors Affecting Dropout Behavior Related to Initial Enrollment Intensity for College Undergraduates?

We use data from the 1990/1994 Beginning Post-Secondary Survey to determine whether the factors associated with long-term attrition from higher education differ for students who initially enrolled part-time as compared to for students who initially enrolled full-time. Using a two-stage sequential decision model to analyze the initial enrollment intensity decision jointly with attrition, we find no evidence of correlation in the unobservables that necessitates joint estimation, but substantial evidence that the factors associated with attrition differ by initial enrollment status. The timing of initial enrollment, academic performance, parental education, household characteristics, and economic factors had a substantially greater impact on those initially enrolled full-time, while racial and ethnic characteristics had a greater impact on those initially enrolled part-time. The results of our study suggest that separate specifications are necessary to identify at-risk full-time as compared with at-risk part-time students. The data employed here were generated while working under a grant supported in part by the Association for Institutional Research, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Science Foundation under the Association for Institutional Research 1999 Improving Institutional Research in Post-secondary Educational Institutions Grant Program. The Spencer Foundation Small Grants program provided funding for the analysis. Leslie Stratton gratefully acknowledges additional support from a 2001 Faculty Excellence Award from Virginia Commonwealth University. Referees from the 2005 Southern Economic Association meetings and from Research in Higher Education provided very helpful comments. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation, the Association for Institutional Research, the National Center for Education Statistics, or the National Science Foundation.     

Developmental theory in the classroom

Two questions are discussed with reference to the role of developmental psychology in the understanding of classroom learning and teaching. One question is whether a developmental perspective provides an adequate basis for a theory of the classroom. The second question concerns the utility to teachers of the adoption of such a perspective. Both questions are discussed in response to a series of critical reviews of current applications of psychology to educatonal practices. Firstly, the adoption of a developmental perspective in classroom investigation is valid since: it is not clear which theoretical principles underpin teachers' practices; developmental theorising already constitutes a corpus of knowledge; the common culture in which teachers work includes developmentally-based applications; existing classroom research on children's learning sometimes lacks a developmental dimension. Secondly, it is argued that the application of a developmental perspective to the classroom is both distinctive and fertile. Instructional psychologists explicitly accept the need for classroom variables to be systematically investigated. Five examples of the application of a developmental perspective are discussed: task-analysis; the diagnosis of children's prior knowledge and the matching problem; learning strategies; assessment and criterion-referencing; methods of investigating children's thinking. Two conclusions are drawn. Firstly, further research is needed to explicate the theoretical principles underpinning teachers' practices. Secondly, further research is needed in the investigation of a developmental perspective in classroom settings. It is an empirical, and open, question as to which type of research will provide a preferential understanding of classroom learning and teaching.     

Musing about Time and Museums

Abstract The author considers the question of how museums engage visitors in thinking about the meaning of time (personal and universal) and the role played by objects, text, designed settings, and artistry in bringing the process to life, a theme inspired by an article, “The Mindful Museum” (2007), by Adam Gopnik.     

An online, interactive approach to teaching neuroscience to adolescents

Most of today's students are skilled in instant messaging, Web browsing, online games, and blogs. These have become part of the social landscape and have changed how we learn and where we learn. The question becomes how to harness the attractiveness and ubiquity of electronic venues toward the goal of teaching neuroscience. At the Rice University Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, a central focus is the creation of innovative materials that appeal to middle school students. A recent project was undertaken through a Science Education Drug Abuse Partnership Award (R25 DA15063) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to inform adolescents about the neurobiology of substance abuse and the current research dealing with a class of drugs known as club drugs. Problem-based learning, multimedia pedagogy, and the National Science Content Standards were integrated to produce The Reconstructors, an episodic series available via the World Wide Web at http://reconstructors.rice.edu. A field test of students from five schools assessed the retention of content after "playing" The Reconstructors series titled Nothing to Rave About. Gain scores indicated that middle school students' knowledge about club drugs and the basic neuroscience concepts that explain their effects improved significantly.